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GAZA CITY-Gaza's only power plant shut down for lack of fuel on Sunday as Israel kept up a blockade of the Hamas-run territory in retaliation for rocket fire, despite warnings of a humanitarian crisis.The closure of the plant, which accounts for 30 percent of the population's needs, plunged entire city blocks in Gaza City into darkness, and was set to sharply worsen power cuts already hitting the impoverished coastal strip."We have had to close the power plant for want of fuel," its director Rafiq Mliha told reporters, warning of "very serious consequences for residents, but also for the operation of hospitals and water treatment plants."Mliha said he had no word on when Israel might allow in the fuel to enable the power station to resume generating electricity.The Gaza Strip, where most of the 1.5 million residents depend on aid, remained sealed off for a third consecutive day as the Israeli cabinet decided to maintain the closure of crossing points amid escalating violence.The Gaza director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees called on Israel to reopen the crossings and appealed to the international community to help the civilian population. The power station's shutdown has "plummeted Gaza City, which has 600,000 people, into darkness," John Ging told a news conference, adding that the loss of electricity "affects every aspect of the civilian population's lives here in Gaza"."If you visit any of the hospitals you will find that its generators are only producing enough electricity to keep essential equipment going. They are very cold, all of the wards, adding to the misery of the patients," Ging said.In the darkened streets of Gaza City, hundreds of people held a candlelit vigil chanting: "No, no to the siege".Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the crossings into Gaza closed late on Thursday, saying the move was aimed at pressuring militants inside to stop firing rockets and mortars into Israel and that it would be reassessed.On Sunday, Barak told the cabinet that the army was "weakening daily life in Gaza"."We are targeting the terror elements and we are trying to show the international community that we are exhausting all possible options before Israel decides on a broad (military) operation," a senior government official quoted him as saying.The Islamist Hamas movement, which has controlled Gaza since seizing power after a week of deadly clashes last June, said the Israeli measures amounted to a "death sentence" for the territory and called for international intervention."Closing the crossings into the Gaza Strip and stopping fuel shipments, alongside the continuation of the criminal killings, represents a death sentence and a slow death for the Palestinian people," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose forces Hamas defeated in Gaza, joined the calls for an end to the Israeli closure.Abbas "called on the Israeli government to lift its blockade of Gaza immediately and allow the entry of fuel to facilitate the lives of the innocent and enable the proper functioning of hospitals which are facing a crisis that is putting lives at risk," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.The Palestinian president also called for a "special meeting" of foreign ministers of the Arab League to discuss the crisis and threatened to raise the matter with the UN Security Council if Israel did not relent in the coming hours.The power cuts come amid peak winter demand and with Gaza already reeling from a previous package of restrictions Israel imposed after the Hamas takeover. "This is a very fragile system that is suffering from seven months of closure and every additional blow is reverberating throughout hospitals, water wells and homes in Gaza," said Sari Bashi, who heads the Israeli human rights watchdog GISHA. Israel has been carrying out air and ground strikes inside Gaza for months but it has so far failed to halt the rocket and mortar fire.On Sunday an Israeli air strike wounded four Palestinians, who an army spokesman said were transporting rockets ahead of an attack.Clashes between the army and Gaza militants sharply escalated after an Israeli operation killed 19 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, on Tuesday in the deadliest single day in Gaza in more than a year.Since then, Israeli raids have killed 36 people, most of them militants, and gunmen have launched some 200 rockets or mortar rounds into Israel, wounding at least 10 people.As in the days of Noah...
